That United would go to the heart of it all back in the spring of 1957 and, finally, carry me along, was confirmed by the semi-final draw. Fiorentina of Italy would travel to Belgrade for their first-leg game against Red Star, and we would go into the jaws of Europe’s greatest team in Madrid.
At Old Trafford there was a giant collective intake of breath when the news came in. Matt Busby had been to Nice to see the reigning champions cruise into the semi-finals on an aggregate of 6–2, and everyone was impatient for him to be back. In those days you couldn’t hop on a plane as though it was a bus. When he did come home, he was besieged by questions: ‘Boss, how good are they?’ ‘Are they really as strong as they say?’ ‘Is Gento the quickest thing in football?’ ‘How will we play di Stefano?’
Busby frowned a little and said, ‘Boys, I don’t want to talk to you about it. You just concentrate on what you have to do: playing the best you have ever played.’ We believed we could see between the lines. The Boss had obviously been extremely impressed and now he had the air of a scout in a cowboy film who had gone to the top of the hill and seen more Indians than anyone could imagine.
I was allowed to go to Madrid because of the possibility of one of the regular first teamers going down with a training injury or a bug, and though I would have given so much to play, I knew that just being there was a mark of progress. I expected to be at least a little awestruck and I was not disappointed. The Bernabeu ground was enormous and dramatic with its two famous columns rising against the skyline of the Spanish capital. Under one of the stands there was a chapel with an ornate altar where the Real players would go for their pre-match prayers, as the matadors did before they faced the bulls down the road at the Plaza Monumental. The tension was established the moment we set foot in Madrid. For the first time there were crowds waiting to greet United at an airport and I remember saying to Eddie Colman, ‘Well, we’ve got something in common with Real: their fans are as daft as ours.’
I joined in the training on a beautifully manicured pitch and the roll of the ball was so true anyone would have been aching to play the following night. Instead, I had to make my way to a seat in the stands. What I saw from there was so entrancing that for a little while at least the pain of defeat, by 3–1, and anger at the rough defensive tactics greeting my friend Tommy Taylor particularly, was somehow reduced in importance.
David Pegg played one of his best games for United; brave and elusive, he made the life of the right back Becerril so miserable he would not appear in the second leg at Old Trafford. Real were held for an hour before they scored after the referee waved play on as Gento shook off a foul by Bill Foulkes; then di Stefano, fifteen minutes later, lobbed Ray Wood quite beautifully.
United still had some fight, however. Taylor, having survived various assaults, reduced the lead with eight minutes to go, only to see Mateos restore Real’s advantage five minutes from the end. In the beaten dressing room, the wounds from punctured hopes were not exactly soothed by another bonus report: di Stefano and his team-mates, we were told, were on £350 a man to reach the final – for us, more than half a season’s wages. However, one thing was beyond any souring. It was an unprejudiced appreciation of di Stefano’s extraordinary talent.
I thought, ‘Who is this man?’ as he made his early impact on the game. ‘He takes the ball from the goalkeeper; he tells the full backs what to do; wherever he is on the field he is in position to take the ball; you can see his influence on everything that is happening.’ Whenever he got into any kind of decent position in midfield it was the signal for Gento to fly. He would go at a hundred miles an hour, di Stefano would send the ball unerringly into his path, Gento would go bang, and you just heard yourself saying, ‘Oh God.’ It was pure revelation. I was high in the stands, taking in the sweep of the great stadium and a crowd estimated at more than 130,000, but from the moment my eyes settled on his compelling figure they rarely strayed. Everything seemed to radiate from him.
I had never seen such a complete footballer. The magic of Stanley Matthews would never die, the growth of Duncan Edwards was a wonder, and in later years I would know Pelé as both an international opponent of stunning range and a warm friend, but the impact of di Stefano crossed all boundaries, despite the disappointment that my club’s brilliant arrival in Europe was being dealt a heavy blow and, as it would prove two weeks later at Old Trafford, one that did not permit recovery. It was as though he had set up his own command centre at the heart of the game. He was as strong as he was subtle. The combination of qualities was mesmerising.
By the time his playing career was over, di Stefano had had three nationalities, Argentinian, Colombian and Spanish, and that night it was easy enough to understand. What football nation on earth wouldn’t want to adopt such a man? At the time I thought that his changes of nationality were too easily accomplished, certainly I couldn’t see it happening under the gaze of an Alan Hardaker, but then on the other hand it was suddenly so much easier to understand why the big Spanish and Italian clubs thought nothing of paying huge amounts of money to move players from one side of the world to another.
Pelé, Maradona, Georgie Best, Denis Law, Johan Cruyff … they would all make their claims to be the best talent I ever played with, against, or watched, and it is the kind of argument that could go on for ever, but there was something unique, I felt, about di Stefano on 11 April 1957 in the Bernabeu. I was a midfielder still learning my trade under the prompting of Jimmy Murphy and maybe it was a benefit of that education, or simply that di Stefano made the game seem so simple, but I understood everything that he was doing. One point can be made with certainty. Pelé was a more instinctive player, someone who reacted as situations came along, and in this he was beyond comparison, but with di Stefano it was as though he had worked things out beforehand.
And everything di Stefano did carried the announcement, ‘I am the best.’ He expected to be treated that way. When he wanted the ball it was his, there could be no argument. He was still the same many years later when we played in a testimonial match in Frankfurt. Ferenc Puskas also played, and you could only marvel at the intensity of the two middle-aged men around a football: di Stefano the leader, Puskas, tubby but still lethal when he was anywhere near goal.
In Madrid di Stefano had dominated the game so profoundly that on the run-in to the second leg you just couldn’t get him out of your thoughts – and for me this became even more overwhelming when I was told I would be replacing the injured Dennis Viollet. I was thrilled, of course, but along with the pleasure of anticipating such a huge match there was the question that everyone, from Matt Busby down to the newest recruit to European football, struggled to answer. What tactics might neutralise di Stefano and Gento?
I played the game in my head a hundred times. I knew that I had the capabilities to put in a decent performance – I was sure about passing, and if a chance came I would remember all the advice of Jimmy Murphy – but it was when you came to the potential of di Stefano to change the match so suddenly, and Gento’s remarkable speed, that you had to wonder if you were just kidding yourself when you imagined how we might win. Though David Pegg had played well at the Bernabeu, he was not Gento, he couldn’t leave you for dead in a flash, and I was certainly not di Stefano.
We worked on the offside trap with Gento in mind, but the tactic is always vulnerable to exceptional speed and brilliant passing, so Busby stuck mostly to his usual theme before we walked down the tunnel: remember to enjoy the experience, he said, play your game and don’t forget the basics, don’t rush anything. This was a team that could punish you cruelly for one misplaced pass, one hurried and faulty tackle.
Though the Old Trafford crowd was only half the size of the one in Madrid, they seemed to be making the same level of noise. As the early going was marked mostly by some hard tackling and a burst of fouls I began to hope that maybe the smaller ground, the closeness of the fans, and our refusal to allow any free space, might just unsettle Real.
Such optimism was destr
oyed after twenty-four minutes. Di Stefano released Raymond Kopa and the Frenchman stroked home the ball with shattering ease. Eight minutes later, Gento finally erupted, and Ray Wood could only beat the ball down to the feet of a Real forward. Our offside trap was in ruins, we were 5–1 down on aggregate, and I had been weaving a fantasy. Maybe the fans were not so close in places like Barcelona and Seville, but this was not a team who could be easily separated from their style and their scoring instincts.
At least we could tell ourselves that we didn’t give up. Tommy Taylor kept probing away and sixteen minutes into the second half he scored. I also did what I was picked to do, I scored another goal, but unfortunately it served only to excite the crowd and, maybe, suggest happier times in the future. It came five minutes from the end, but Duncan seemed to believe that that left enough time to pull off something even more remarkable than the defeat of Bilbao. When a Real player went down and stayed down, Duncan was convinced he was feigning injury, so he picked him up and carted him over the touchline. The Real players went mad. One of them had sufficient English to shout, ‘You can’t do that!’ but of course there were times when the big man thought he could do anything. It was too late, however.
In the dressing room Matt Busby was comforting. He said that we had played well and bravely, and showed what kind of a future we had. That was encouraging but the reality was that on the day we were just not good enough to make up the two goals. When I played back the game I noted that Kopa, who had struck so devastatingly, might easily have scored at least one more goal, and there had always been di Stefano and Gento ready to raise their ambition, and their play, if the need arose.
Yet a point about our potential had certainly been made. We ran out of time, but when the late goals went in we learned something about Real – and ourselves. We had got to a stage, though very late, when we felt we could truly compete with the best team in Europe. We did have cause for a little satisfaction. It was as though we outran our doubts and discovered that if this team from Madrid was hugely gifted, even magical, they were still human. If you cut them, blood would come, and there was no question that when Tommy and I found the net, and the crowd went mad, they became more than a little rattled. This was a tremendous encouragement for future campaigns, and a genuine reward for Busby’s half-time speech. He had said, ‘Just keep doing what you are doing, you’re looking good, keep passing the ball, keep hustling, and get at them whenever you can.’
In that endeavour we were hugely helped by the Stretford End. There were times when we laid pressure on Real’s goal, when we had broken down one of their moves and were pouring in on their goal, when I thought to myself, ‘How did we get here? Did the Stretford End just suck the ball down to this end?’ The crowd had certainly helped to create a surge of tremendous desire to show Real that we could play at their level, and that they were sure to be seeing quite a bit more of us in the years ahead.
As we came out of the shower and began to dress, Eddie Colman was the young philosopher. ‘Well, boys, we’ve had a hell of a ride,’ he announced.
It said much about the instant hold Europe had taken on the imagination of the team that we had a strong sense that in some ways the season was over, at least the best of it, despite the fact that in ten days’ time United – and this would once more include me – had the chance to land the first league and cup Double of the century.
Five days before the second Real game we had collected a second straight First Division title, with three games to spare, and would finish up six points ahead of Spurs. Now only Aston Villa, a mediocre team who would finish tenth in the league and twenty-one points behind us, could deny us our assignment with history.
When I had been picked to play in the semi-final against Birmingham City my friends Tommy Taylor and David Pegg had hammered home a hard lesson. They told me that it was the one game in which, beyond any question, you had to be prepared to run hard right up to the final whistle. ‘This is the game no one wants to lose,’ Tommy said. ‘You have come a long way, and it would be terrible if you failed at the final hurdle before Wembley.’
I had quickly learned the value of their advice. Birmingham didn’t have our skills, but they had some formidable players: Gil Merrick in goal, right back Jeff Hall, and Trevor Smith, the big centre half. They had all played for England and their whole team carried the conviction that it was just too late in the day to surrender all that had been achieved on the long, tough road to the cup.
It was the biggest game I had ever played in, and though Birmingham, who had a reputation for kicking, seemed to mellow a little in the spotlight of Hillsborough, they were running quite as hard as my team-mates had predicted. As the game raced along, I thought, ‘It’s exactly how they described it. There is just no easy way of winning.’ You have to concentrate every minute, you have to think and, most of all, you have to run. It was a lesson I would never forget when I prepared for a cup game, even against the least considered of non-league opposition.
The first thing you had to do was make sure you ran every bit as much as they did. If you did this, the fact that you were better players had to be decisive. Against Birmingham, we got into our stride very quickly, and when Johnny Berry wriggled through to open the scoring in the twelfth minute it meant that our opponents had to open up the game, which immediately made them vulnerable to our greater attacking resources.
In another minute we were two ahead when David Pegg reinforced his pre-match theory with fine action. He outstripped the Birmingham cover and delivered a perfect cross for me to increase the lead. This meant there was only one way we could lose, and that would be to assume the match was already over. Birmingham never gave up, not even in the last minutes when it was clear enough to everybody else that they would not be returning to Wembley.
After all this, how could a teenaged footballer – I would not be twenty for another six months – feel that a Wembley cup final might be tinged with anti-climax? No doubt the only reason could be that the spell of Europe, the yearning to be playing instead in the great final that would now see Real triumph over Italy’s Fiorentina, was still so powerful. The Villa game, and the possibility of the historic Double that would have reflected the development of the team so perfectly, was maybe no longer the great aim it should have been. One moment we had the whole football world at our feet. The next, that world had been scaled down.
The process was completed when Villa’s Northern Irish international left winger Peter McParland crashed into our goalkeeper Ray Wood after just six minutes. This was a regular challenge in those days, but Ray’s cheekbone was fractured and Jackie Blanchflower was given the jersey. It wrecked our plans to play composed and flowing football. Instead of dominating the game, on Wembley’s strength-sapping surface, we were chasing an extra man, and maybe also were feeling the weight of expectation. Courageously, Ray returned to supply a nuisance value on the wing – the latest of a long list of Wembley’s gallant walking wounded in those days before substitutes. Blanchflower performed well in the emergency role – it was one that I managed to avoid throughout my career – but he was powerless when McParland, of all people, scored twice in the second half.
This provoked Matt Busby into one last gamble in an effort to retrieve the Double which would have crowned arguably the most brilliant piece of team building and replenishing in the history of English football. Wood returned to goal and Duncan Edwards, the man for all situations and seasons, was pushed into attack. With Ray back between the posts Villa had lost the numerical advantage they had cleverly exploited with McParland’s scoring burst between the 67th and 71st minutes and Tommy Taylor retrieved a goal with seven minutes to go. We roused ourselves to a frenzy of effort, winning a stream of corners, but Villa hung on to their advantage.
Busby’s post-game speech was another testament to his style. He thanked the team for its efforts, and noted that no one could question our commitment or our ability. Sometimes football was like life. You didn’t always get what you deserved, but th
e trick was to continue to believe in yourself – and never to forget the need to do the right thing. He was proud of us all. We were young and there was still so much to achieve. It should not be forgotten that we had won our second straight league title and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. He raised a glass to the future of Manchester United.
9
INDESTRUCTIBLE
A FEW MONTHS after the FA Cup final, we beat Aston Villa 4–0 in the Charity Shield. Ray Wood and Peter McParland were captains for the game, which meant that they shook hands and closed, as warmly as possible in the circumstances, a chapter that had caused much bitterness among United fans. I now believe that Villa had been charged up that day, nobody more so than Peter, and I am convinced that what he did came out of determination to steal an edge rather than from any bad intention. However, less than a year after, the sense that we had indeed been victims of some very rough larceny still surfaced strongly if ever the subject was raised. But then football, like life, rolls along and on Saturday, 1 February 1958, at Highbury, we would probably have laughed at the idea that somehow we were a team who might draw more than the occasional wound from unkind fate.
We beat Arsenal in a stupendous game, one that some would tell me later was the best they ever saw. It was also true that no one at that time could have been less susceptible than me to a bout of brooding over the future. The team flowed beautifully and once again I had that boyish feeling that I was indestructible. I may still have been in the dog days of my army life, but as a professional footballer I was touching new levels of confidence in my ability. The dictums of Jimmy Murphy were no longer a set of difficult demands. They formed the code which I knew now could open all the doors.
My Manchester United Years: The Autobiography Page 11